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OLPC's UI To Be Kid-Tested In February
dfoulger writes "The AP is reporting that kid testing of Negroponte's '$100 Laptop' starts in February. This article is some of the first mainstream coverage of just how different the user interface of the XO Computer is — it ditches the traditional office metaphors in favor of a 'neighborhood' and an activity-based journaling approach. Video of Sugar, as the UI is called, has been out on the net for a while, and Popular Science recently gave the color / monochrome display a 'Grand Award' in its 2006 technology roundup. What do you think of this new UI?"
I've just watched the video and it looks fairly good.
Why is there no URL bar? It explains there isn't one but why not? Seems a bit of a problem for visiting specific sites as you'd have to use Google for everything it seems.
Monkeyboi
I understand why they did it but as a rule I hate icon based systems. I have a CG software I was trying to use that went that route. In that case they went too small with the icons to cram more in so they look like colored blobs. Instead of glancing at text I find I waste most of my time holding the cursor over icon after icon waiting for the roll over text to tell me what the function is. I was also surprised they were boasting of no text bar on the browser. Leaves you at the mercy of the search engine. In may be better for kids starting out the way they laid it out but how does it give them an education in computers when it doesn't teach them how any other computer on the planet works? They'd be better off with a ten year old Windows machine or far better off with a current Linux system. Nice idea but it seems completely pointless.
What does the laptop have to do with the Montessori method? If the Montessori method is inferior, why has a 2006 study proven that Montessori students averagely perform better?
Hack your mind out of its sandbox.
I was unaware that the current US educational system had anything to do with Montessori methods to begin with.
(currently testing something about signatures here)
They need to test with adults. There's a reason there's a cliche of "my kid fixed the VCR, computer, etc."--because kids' brains are sponges for new stimuli. They're still forming their how-the-world-works schemas and can easily adapt to new things. Adults, even ones who haven't used computers, are going to have more fixed ways of going about things, less willing to learn new concepts, less patient, less curious (just as a general rule.. I've known some older people who are insatiable learners).
Kids are very smart... and I believe they would have little trouble dealing with a modern, full-featured UI and OS.
My daughter is 7. From time to time, I let her use my PC (other times, I can't stop her...). In XP Pro, she's figured out how to:
* Log on using her mother's account (the password is trivial, it's her name)
* Change her display picture
* Change the password
* Fire up Firefox and surf to a couple of her favourite sites (others she has to ask for help)
* Send voice clips using Live Messenger
She worked out how to record herself singing on her mum's phone and change the tone for text messages to be that sound clip. She's changed the name and background image on one of the cordless house phones, something I didn't even know you could do (not that I've really played with them much, they're just phones...)
Kids are smarter than most adults give them credit for (strange, really, given they were all kids themselves once). Some kids are *much* smarter. I know it's a statistically insignificantly small sample size, but in my experience, kids are perfectly capable of using a modern UI.
However, given the low specs of the machine, it may well be that the machine isn't capable of presenting a full, modern UI (yes, yes, WindowMaker, fvwm, fluxbox, etc - I know. They're not what I mean by "full, modern UI".)
It's official. Most of you are morons.
I find it truly amazing that nobody on the development team realized the obvious icon collision with their primary symbol... the "child" splat and this much older, and more universal symbol.
As for multiplication tables, I think it would be easier to learn them if the computer could perform testing (i.e. repeatedly ask multiplication questions and get the child to enter the results. Gradually reduce the amount of time allowed to answer. At first, provide a graphical representation of an N by M square of blobs to re-inforce the association between the numbers and shapes). I found learning French and German vocabulary much easier when I wrote a program to test myself. I entered the English/foreign word pairs, and it would repeatedly ask me one and expect me to provide the other within 5-10 seconds before going on to the next one. Running this for about 20 minutes, followed by a break for 40 minutes and then another 5 minutes locked a set of words in my long-term memory far more efficiently than any other method I've yet encountered.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Maybe I'm just a fundamentalist, but children first need to learn basic skills like reading and writing.
And why does parent post think this excludes learning with a computer?
My daughter enjoyed programs I wrote in Applesoft on an Apple ][ that helped her learn her alphabet and basic counting when she was 3 and 4 years old. She was reading before she entered first grade.
Certainly the most critical part of it was her mother schooling her. But she also has vivid and pleasant memories of playing with that old Apple. The computer was of definite value to her as part of a broad learning experience.
There can be no question that the OLPC computers will be an incredibly valuable adjunct in teaching kids the basic skills of literacy, and of how to learn.
Cool, it has Etoys. :-) Etoys is amazing; a great way to get started with writing software, especially games. And it's a nice stepping stone to Smalltalk, which is a very nice programming language.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
> If the Montessori method is inferior, why has a 2006 study proven that Montessori students averagely perform better?
Montessori schools are private, and thus get to select their students, so they don't ever have the inconvenience of anyone who might actually drive their averages down. They're also expensive, and the correlation between affluence and academic performance is pretty well known.
Personally, I don't find it easy to use at all. When it first boots up, you get a screen with a little symbol in the front. Clicking it does nothing. Eventually, if you happen to leave your cursor on the side of the screen, a little thing will pop up. You then have a few strange, ambiguous, unlabeled icons. Only one of them really indicates what it does (the chat one), and it probably wouldn't to people who had never seen a computer.
Even if you figure out what those buttons do, the interface is very tedious. The only way to switch "activities" is to move your cursor to the side, wait, click a little, unlabeled button, and click another unlabeled, ambiguous button. In other systems you just click the (I'll admit, likely unlabeled) button on the taskbar/dock. It might seem like I'm complaining over nothing, but trying to, say, take notes off a web page in abiword would take much longer than with with a book, paper, and pencil, even assuming the person using it could type (unlikely).
How is this easier than GNOME, KDE, Aqua, XFCE, or even Windows?
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.